We're all looking forward to this, the first proper test of our new drum sound. First there is a lot of tinkering as we try out mics in different places, different mics in the same places, the same mics in different preamps, and different preamps for the same mics in different places. This is where we feel the benefit of Dan's experience. It sounded good to me the first time, but he keeps squinting, chewing, tilting his head like there's something in his ear and moving things around until it sounds even better.
Vapour Trail has stayed pretty much the same since we first recorded the demo, so we're fairly familiar with it, which helps. Even so, this is the first time we've focussed so intensively on the drum part and there are still lots of decisions to make. It's quite a thrilling process, watching the part develop and develop, until suddenly you're listening and you notice it sounds like a record and not someone doing drum karaoke. Dave is playing well, and seems very tolerant of us all pitching in with ideas ("Try du-du-du-dakadakadakadaka-bosh!"), which has always been one of his many talents. He's naturally a very classy player, so he sometimes needs encouragement to be more dumb, cos dumb is often better for noisy music. And this is almost as noisy as we ever get.
After about four or five hours we have enough quality takes to stitch together An example of the full-circleness of recording techniques: when bands used to record all together to tape in the fifties and sixties, you could do several takes and edit the best bits into a SuperTake that is better than real life. Recording has always been about creating idealised music that transcends the tiresome reality of musicians playing. They get tired, their fingers slip, someone drops something, someone botches their entry. It's like anything tricky that you're trying to do well - the more you want to get it right the more you fuck it up. Like apologising. Anyway, when people started recording in multiple tracks on giant tapes it got a lot harder to chop takes up. My first few visits to studios in the nineties all featured very lengthy drum sessions because you'd just have to keep replaying and dropping in and replaying until you had a complete take. These days you can chop tracks up and tinker with them to an infinite degree once you've recorded them, so there's no need to flog your drummer to death. If you've got a few good performances of the right part, you can assemble the best bits at your leisure, just like in the old days. Although, I must point out that drum editing can be an extremely tedious enterprise because you can get very fixated on late snares and funny hi-hats, to the point where you wish just wish you'd made the fucker play it right in the first place...and our first drum track is finished.
We are happy from our headbones to our nutsacks.
